The concept of industrial clusters has attracted much attention during the past decade, both as descriptive of an increasingly important phenomenon and as a basis for effective public intervention in the economies of lagging city-regions. However, there is much ambiguity in the way in which this concept is used, presenting an obstacle both to empirical testing and to realistic assessments of policy relevance. In this paper, we distinguish three ideal-typical models of processes which may underlie spatial concentrations of related activities, with very different implications both in terms of relevant evidence and the scope for promotional policies. Survey data for the London conurbation are used to explore the relation between concentration and different forms of linkage, with results which point to the dominance of pure agglomeration effects in this context at least.

This paper provides a critical examination of the widely disseminated view that innovation in all or most activities is favoured by certain common characteristics in the local 'milieu', involving a cluster of many small firms benefiting from flexible inter-firm alliances, supported by mutual information exchanges of both an informal and formal nature. The general applicability of this model, and the localness of crucial linkages, is questioned initially on the basis of a review of different hypotheses about the geography of innovation. Moreover, examination of new survey evidence from a large number of firms in the London conurbation suggests that the importance of specifically local informal information spillovers for successful innovation is very much more limited than has been suggested, as are the supposed advantages of firm smallness.

In what sense left behind by globalisation? Looking for a less reductionist geography of the populist surge in Europe

This paper analyses the policy implications of territorial competition; that is the promotion of local economic development in competition with other territories. It does so both in analytical and empirical terms moving from a wider supranational and analytical standpoint to a more practical and local one. The impact of territorial competition in welfare terms depends critically on the perspective adopted. Some policies are pure waste even from the point of view of the initiating territory. Other policies may have a positive impact in economic welfare terms, viewed from the perspective of the territory, but be zero sum from a wider perspective. There may also be policies, however, which increase economic welfare, both locally and from a wider perspective. This suggests that there is a case for providing a supranational regulatory framework. The empirical section first examines the evidence as to whether local policies for economic growth do, in fact, have any impact. The paper concludes with an examination of the actual policies pursued in a sample of European regions and draws out some conclusions for local policy makers.

In the urban resurgence accompanying the growth of the knowledge economy, second-order cities appear to be losing out to the principal city, especially where the latter is much larger and benefits from substantially greater agglomeration economies. The view that any city can make itself attractive to creative talent seems at odds with the idea of a country having just one 'escalator region' where the rate of career progression is much faster, especially for in-migrants. This paper takes the case of England, with its highly primate city-size distribution, and tests how its second-order cities (in size order, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Sheffield, Liverpool, Nottingham, and Leicester) compare with London as human-capital escalators. The analysis is based on the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Survey of linked census records for 1991-2001 and uses one key indicator of upward social mobility -the transition from White Collar Non-core to White Collar Core. For non-migrants, the transition rate for the second-order cities combined is found to fall well short of London's, but in one case -Manchesterthe rate is significantly higher than the rest of the country outside the Greater South East. Those moving to the second-order cities during the decade experienced much stronger upward social mobility than their non-migrants, but this 'migrant premium' was generally similar to that for London, suggesting that it results from people moving only after they have secured a better job. Second-order cities, therefore, cannot rely on the speculative migration of talented people but need suitable jobs ready for them to access.

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Territorial economic competition first emerged in North America, appeared in Europe during the 1980s, and recently in many LDC/transition economies chasing FDI. In China the process is key to economic development, but operates without the electoral competition and private land markets which are central in the West. We relate developments in each to a general model whereby local circumstances shape selective coalitions of economic agents, and hence policy mixes, differing in their wastefulness and redistributive effects. In the Chinese case, strong competition (involving much waste) is primarily driven by ambitious local officials seeking promotion by pursuing centrally determined growth targets

"Current research in migration is moving on from neo-classical and behavioural perspectives to a more structural approach relating to wider processes, issues of power and the particular role of employers. Within this programme a key issue for investigation is the interaction between spatial mobility and the structuring of labour markets. This paper focuses on the significance of labour market segmentation--in terms both of job stability and gender--for migration, both theoretically and through an empirical analysis of data from the UK Labour Force Survey on sponsored and unsponsored moves."